“When content scarcity was the norm, we could live with a minimum of context. In a limited market, our editors became skilled in making decisions about what would be published. Now, in an era of abundance, editors have inherited a new and fundamentally different role: figuring out how “what is published” will be discovered.”

“It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini.”

“How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.”

“(About her age when her first poem was published...) As a poet, it's fair to say that I was a 'late bloomer.' My youngest had published two poems by the age of nine. Isn't that amazing? I was a little older when I saw my first poem in print -- almost 40 years older. Now my little boy is my editor, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm the only writer I know who used to burp her editor.”

“Don't make the editor's decision for her by not submitting.”

“You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.”